dirty kids and sandy sleeping bags

Rathtrevor Provincial Park, for those of you in the vicinity, is the most awesome place to spend a few days with your children.

I am back feeling rejuvenated, happy and like i finally 'get it.' I get why people go camping.

I pictured lots of hard work and very little sleep. Grumpy, bored kids. I couldn't have been more wrong.

The campsite was full of families and tons of kids. Tristan and Toby and the other four kids we were with disappeared early in the morning and would return every hour or so to check in. Other than that we rarely saw them. They have never had that kind of freedom. The freedom to be kids like i remember it. The exhilaration of riding fast on your bike with a group of other kids, meeting new friends from different places, making fun happen.

The fun for my kids was hanging out at the playground and showers. They made themselves the managers of the bicycle wash. Spending hours washing all the bikes they could and, eventually, moving onto cars. They made $1.13. It was like gold in their hands.

I enjoyed having three friends to help me take care of parker and eliza and to spend my time with. Late nights and some newly discovered and delicious red wine around the campfire made my life, even briefly, seem normal. The opposite of lonely. That was what camping was for me. I realized, as i struggled to put my thoughts into conversations, that i have spent so many of the past years thinking in photographs and words that forming actual thoughts verbally is much more difficult than letting them rattle around in your brain and, eventually, spill out onto the keyboard.

And. I did see this sunset.